


Fragments

by allofthefandoms



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brief mention of past canon abuse and torture, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 01:37:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3310811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthefandoms/pseuds/allofthefandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky knew he had a soulmate once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/gifts).



> This is an MCU/616 fusion, so I pulled some backstory from the movies and others from the comics. And regarding the torture tag, there is a flashback memory of about two sentences of what was done to Bucky in the Red Room, but it's not overly explicit.

Bucky knew he had a soulmate once.

He remembered the first time he saw Steve smile.  The 10 year old boy was gap toothed and bloody, small enough to blow away in a stiff breeze.  He had been fighting with some neighborhood 12 year olds determined to cause old Ms. Wilson trouble while she toddled home with her groceries.  Bucky remembers vividly the way Steve charged at them, screaming bloody murder.  It didn’t stop them from pounding Steve into a pulp and leaving him bleeding on the ground.

“Hey, you okay?” Bucky had asked, leaning over the boy with a worried frown.

“I had them on the ropes,” the boy replied, grinning bloodily, and Bucky was gone.

Then there’s the Red Room and the faint absence of something that Bucky doesn’t quite understand and he pretends not to recognize it.  It’s some strange gap, and he knows something should be there but a weapon doesn’t feel.

(The price of feeling is too high.  Its shocks and freezings and drugs that leave you shaking and crying and sick in a padded, silent room.  Feeling is being hosed down because you’re covered in your own puke and shit.  Feeling is a nightmare.)

But then she walked into the room, all of five foot nothing, and Bucky knew.  He felt that strange empty space inside of him snap into completion and he knew.  Not even the Red Room could erase the marks on a soul.  She was all of ten years old, but when she looked up at him, eyes bright with fire, he knwqshe felt it too.

She was a woman when they wake Bucky up next.  She was breathtaking, and in the years he’s been asleep she’s truly lived up to her name.

Black Widow.

Bucky ccould barely take her eyes off of her the whole mission, and things almost go wrong as a result.  But she’s fire and ice all at once, and she doesn’t let the mark slip away.  When it’s over and they are back in their dingy safe room, she turned to him.

“I know,” she said simply.

(They fuck on every wall and horizontal surface.  The Red Room burns the safe house behind them, and Bucky is thankful that they won’t discover the broken table and trash filled with condoms.)

But Bucky’s not either of those men anymore.

~ ~ ~

“You don’t have to keep doing this, Buck.”  Steve is staring at his hands, turning them over and over while trying not to pick his nails.  Bucky knows Steve feels it full force. They’ve talked about it.  But the best Bucky can muster is a half bond.  He’s not the person Steve’s soul knows anymore.  There is a wall of darkness and guilt and blood there, and while Bucky is seeping through more and more every day, he knows he will never be that person again.

(The worst part is that Natasha is in that darkness.  She’s no more his bond mate than Steve, but somehow it still feels like cheating.)

“I know things have changed,” Steve says and the guilt in his voice seems to choke.  “You’re your own man.  You don’t…you don’t owe me anything.”

“Steve, you’re still my friend,” Bucky replies, knowing the rebuttal sounds weak even to him.  “And…and the worst part of it is that I can still _feel_ you.  My soul still knows you, but…but I’m some sort of patchwork freak with a broken soul and you deserve better.  You don’t have to be with your soulmate.  Everyone knows that.  Hell, your parents were mad for each other and they weren’t soul mates.  You should find someone.  Someone like Sam.  Or Sharon.  Hell, even Nat.”  That cuts Bucky like a knife.

“She…She’s not interested.  She says she lost her soulmate and refused to talk about it.”

Bucky’s out the door before Steve can finish speaking.

~ ~ ~

“Tell me you feel it,” Bucky begs in fast Russian as he shoves through the door of Natasha’s flat.  “Tell me I’m not imagining things.”  She looks at him sadly, letting him pace and tremble.

“I do feel something, James,” she murmurs in reply.  “But it’s broken and faint and you deserve better.”

“And I will have no one.”  Bucky sags against the wall, head bowed.

“Darling, what’s wrong?”

“We were soulmates once.  And so were Steve and I.  And…And I can still feel both of you.  But I’m broken, halved, stitched together improperly and I will never have a soul mate again.”

“You don’t have to choose,” She says gently, cupping Bucky’s cheek.  “You are allowed to have us both, if that’s what your heart needs.”

“Will…will you come back to Steve’s with me and talk about this with him?” Bucky asks, voice tiny.  “I…I don’t think I can do this on my own.”

“Of course,” Natasha says, kissing Bucky’s cheek.

~ ~ ~

Bucky can’t look at Steve as he explains.  He knows the expression Steve will make, one of heartbreak and love and support, no matter what Bucky ends up telling him.  It’s what’s made it so hard to share what the Red Room did with Steve.  Steve knows too much of the man Bucky was before, knows just how much they would have had to break him to turn him into the man he is now.  Bucky doesn’t need those kind of reminders.

“So you want to be with both of us,” Steve says after a moment’s thought.  Bucky nods, still staring at his hands.  He flinches when he feels a warm and callused hand covering his own.

“Yes, Bucky,” Steve says and Bucky looks up, eyes wide.  He glances at Natasha and she’s smiling just as warmly and tenderly as Steve.

“We want you to be happy,” Steve goes on.  “To be fulfilled and whole.  In love as well as in life.  I’d be cruel to make you choose when I’d be just as happy to share.”  Bucky practically throws himself at Steve, and their kiss is guilt free.  For Bucky, it’s like coming home.

Later, Natasha and Steve are curled against him, something playing on the TV that none of them are really paying attention to.  The warmth of their bodies seeps into his very bones, and for once, he feels like one complete whole and not a thousand tiny fragments.  


 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't think this would end up being so darn sad, but I was writing about Bucky so why am I surprised? I also wanted to write something with a relationship more like mine, where my partners are independent of each other and not in a relationship. So yes, there is no Steve/Bucky/Nat, but everything's nice and consensual.
> 
> Hope you like it Verity!


End file.
